This is the last day with Elder Harding. We tried to visit all of his friends one last time.
This was one of the meals that a member fed us after church one day. It consists of rice, pumpkin, rice, spinach soup, bamboo.
This is a grasshopper. This lady handed me a plate full of them and just said eat it.
Biking in a pretty area on P-day.
Me in my Willy Wonka glasses.
Weekly Update:
This last week we did a lot of biking. Definitely the most I have had to do on my mission so far. There is an investigator that lives an hour away by bike ride that we visited. We had to ride on the highway for a while and for some reason the wind blowing against us was unrelenting. It probably added about 10 to 15 minutes to the bike ride just because the wind was blowing so hard. Usually riding back, we can catch a kinda car trailer thing where we just jump in the back and throw our bikes in too, but it wouldn't come that day, so we just had to ride our bikes all the way back. It isn't too bad though. This is honestly what I was hoping to do when I came on a mission.
One interesting thing about serving in Thailand is that 50% of people have work where they just do it right outside their house. So they are selling food, doing laundry, stitching clothes, cleaning, etc. They love just stopping whatever they are doing to talk to us because they are never super busy, but they are always just working if that makes any sense at all. Whenever we want to meet people, there is a lot of just hoping that they are there and are free to talk to us because when we try to make some set appointments a lot of people just say they are busy.
There is a lady who just recently got baptized that we go visit every once and a while. Her name is Ba meh (I'm sorry I’m trying to translate the sound of the name ) Anyways, right now she is living alone because her husband died and her two children have moved out. She loves talking to us and whenever we go she just feeds us as much food will fit in our stomachs. I love her because her faith in God is so strong and even though she is alone in her family, she is not alone because God is with her. Her goal is to someday visit the temple in Hong Kong and we will help her to reach that goal for sure.
While inviting this week, we rode our bikes up to these four ladies sitting on the ground eating food, so we decided to stop and talk to them. They offered us to eat some Thai food, so we sat down and they served us up. These Ladies set down a pan of about 200 cooked grasshoppers and told us to eat up. Haha it was kind of funny and I ate a few. I think they were just testing us to see what we would do.
In the Surin branch, there is a member who is a twelve year old girl and her name is Gift. (for the longest time I thought it was only Gif, and I thought that was funny, but it turns out that it is just hard to pronounce the "t" at the end of words for Thai speakers.) Anyways, she amazes me every time I talk to her because she always asks super deep questions in the gospel. For instance, she just recently asked me about the covenant that Abraham made with God and the different things it affects. There is no way I would be asking about that when I was only twelve. I definitely need to continue to study so I can answer those kinds of questions more deeply.
Recently, while riding our bikes, Elder Harding and I found a basketball court that is pretty close to our house. I was super excited because I haven't had the chance to play basketball yet in Surin and I totally miss it. On our P-day we got the chance to go play some basketball at the courts, but there were some games playing when we went there. I was very impressed by how good some of these guys were at basketball because so far, I haven't seen any Thai people who play at all, but these guys were way good. After they were done playing, we I asked if we could play too and they were going crazy that these white guys wanted to play with them. I loved playing with them because we had a unity where we could play really well together even though we were from different sides of the world. I love sports because it doesn't matter who you are, but you can always play together. There were about 50 to 60 people there either playing or just watching. It was super fun even though I had to play in my missionary church clothes. Also, my team never lost a game, and whenever I dunked it, everyone just ran around in circles and screamed freaking out. It made me miss basketball a ton. I will definitely go back there and try to make good friends with some of the other players.
So yesterday, we got a call that my current companion Elder Harding is moving areas to Bangkapi. (That is my area that I just came from!) I am super sad to see Elder Harding go because we have grown to be such good friends here in Bangkapi and he is a very good missionary. I have learned a lot from him. I know he will have fun down in Bangkapi because it is a wonderful place. My new companion will be Elder Siebert. He has been out on the mission for a long time already, so I am super excited to learn some more from someone who is very experienced. We are gonna have a ton of fun together.
Thank you to everyone who reads my letters! I know that we are children of God, He loves us, and He wants to live with us after this life. I would not be on a mission right now if I did not believe that with all my heart and mind. Everyone have a great week!
-Elder Barron
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